Radeon HD 4850 2GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 is 101% faster than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 64448 (101%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (more or less 79%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (approximately 28%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (28%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.